


Fifteen Minutes

by RiseHigh



Series: The Reluctant Housemates [5]
Category: Class (TV 2016)
Genre: And sees what Charlie can't, Because Matteusz likes to meddle, Because he cares, But he doesn't even see what Tanya sees, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Episode 1x03, Unexpected Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-18
Updated: 2016-11-18
Packaged: 2018-08-31 17:54:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8588143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RiseHigh/pseuds/RiseHigh
Summary: Then the door opened.  She stopped typing and looked up in surprise.  Miss Quill gave her an appraising look.“You wanted in, didn’t you?”“Uh, yeah.”  Tanya deleted what she had typed in the text message box and walked in through the door Miss Quill held open. “They’ll be here in 15 minutes.”





	

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be a short little thing, but apparently I struggle with short. 
> 
> A few days post-Lankin, Matteusz realizes that Miss Quill and Tanya both need to talk and are the only ones who experienced the same thing. So he invites Tanya over to work on a project and then intentionally makes sure he and Charlie arrive 15 minutes late.

Pushing open the gate, Tanya walked up to the door of 1 Welling Road and knocked.  No response.  She knocked again.

“They aren’t here.”

It took Tanya a moment before she realized the voice was coming from above her.  She took a step backwards to see Miss Quill standing behind an open window.

“We have this literature project.”

“Don’t care.”

“Matteusz said to come over at 4:30.”  She glanced down at her phone and held up the screen, even though she wasn’t sure Miss Quill could see it.  “It’s 4:30.”

Miss Quill slammed the window closed.  “Right, and that means?” Tanya said to herself as unlocked her phone to text Charlie and Matteusz.

**_Tanya_ ** _: Where r u?_

Her fingers tapped the edge of the phone while she waited for a response.  They were probably off somewhere being self-involved and in love.  Tanya actually thought they made a cute couple, but no amount of cuteness made up for leaving her stranded at their house waiting on their alien physics teacher who might never open the door.  Finally, she saw those three little dots appear and then two successive messages.

**_Matteusz_ ** _: Sorry. 15 min._

**_Charlie_ ** _: It’s his fault we’re late._

Tanya looked at the closed door and up at the still closed window.  Fifteen minutes didn’t leave enough time to do anything.  There were some shops down the street, but by the time she walked over she would have to turn around.  She returned to the text message.

**_Tanya:_ ** _Miss Quill won’t..._

Then the door opened.  She stopped typing and looked up in surprise.  Miss Quill gave her an appraising look.

“You wanted in, didn’t you?”

“Uh, yeah.”  Tanya deleted what she had typed in the text message box and walked in through the door Miss Quill held open. “They’ll be here in 15 minutes.”

Miss Quill said nothing and mere shooed her towards the kitchen.  Tanya stopped in front of the table and hesitated—unsure of where to go.  She had only been in their house a couple of times and never without Charlie there.  She had no idea where they planned to work.  Resting her hand on the back of one of the chairs, she considered her options: kitchen table, lounge, or run back to wait in the front garden.

“Well, go on, sit down,” Miss Quill told her as she went about filling the kettle with water.  “I’m sure he intends to have you three take over the kitchen table all evening.”

“Did Charlie not tell you I was coming over?”

Miss Quill looked at her for a moment then turned to open one of the cabinets.  “Charles does what Charles wants.”

Her tone was normal—well, annoyed, but that was normal—yet her body language was different.  Tanya wasn’t entirely sure what it meant, but she had an idea.  One thing was certain: Miss Quill did not want her to keep talking about Charlie. Then again, it was just as possible that Miss Quill didn’t want to talk period, so Tanya sat down and focused on taking her things out of her bag.

“Do you want coffee?” Miss Quill offered abruptly.

“No, thanks.”

“Tea?”

“No, thanks.”

“Water then?”

Tanya held up a water bottle.  “I’m good.”

“Is there anything else, I can get you?”

“Uh, no.  I’m fine.”  

Miss Quill went back to fixing her own coffee and Tanya organized her books while sneaking furtive looks at her teacher.  The entire exchange was forced and stilted.  As if Miss Quill had found a script on earth culture and was going through the motions almost against her will. 

Was it against her will? Did Charlie order her to be hospitable?  He wouldn’t.  Would he?

Tanya snuck another glance at her.  Miss Quill was now frowning while looking out the window at a family walking by.  Maybe she just hated humans and having one in her house.  Tanya looked back down at her notebook and Voices in Speech and Writing anthology.  She really should have brought some of her other work or her laptop. 

She pressed the button on her phone.  No messages.  Texting Charlie and Matteusz would be pointless and Ram and April were probably working on their assignment together—or flirting.  They had been different ever since the night of the Lankin.  Tanya shook her head.  She didn’t like thinking about the Lankin.  Even the memory of it was unnerving. 

She glanced down at her book for a moment and then looked back to the kitchen.  Miss Quill was now holding a cup of coffee and staring at her.

That was also unnerving.

“Have you read anything interestingly lately?” Tanya asked.  Forced conversation was better than silence and staring.  Miss Quill looked at her in confusion and said nothing.  “Matteusz said you read The Hunger Games.”

Still just silence and staring.

“Did you like it?” Tanya tried again.

“It had dead teenagers, so yes.”

Tanya was taken aback for a moment.  Charlie had made the same joke when Matteusz had told them.  They had all laughed, but later—when her mind was wandering during English (she really didn’t like poetry)—she thought about the themes of the book: survival, governmental oppression, and rebellion.

“I, uh, thought you’d find the rebellion against the Capital more interesting.”

Miss Quill studied her and, for a moment, Tanya wondered if broaching that topic was a good idea.  Did she really want to be talking to Miss Quill?

“Well, yes,” Miss Quill said finally. It was more to her coffee cup than her, but Tanya would take it. “There was more melodrama than was necessary,” she continued with an eye roll.  “So much emotion over two boys.”

Tanya fought the urge to smile.  Her eye rolls actually were quite funny when they weren’t directed at you. “Well, Katniss is a teenager.”

“And therefore she must have the teen angst that plagues you all.”

“I don’t have teen angst.”

“You’re younger than the rest of them, yes?”  Miss Quill asked as she walked over to the table.  Tanya nodded.  “Give it time.”

She punctuated her statement by setting her mug on the table.  Tanya thought she might sit down, but instead Miss Quill stood there without moving.  Tanya couldn’t tell exactly, but it seemed like she almost wanted to sit down, but couldn’t let herself.

“You should try the Divergent series,” Tanya suggested.  Miss Quill raised an eyebrow in response.  “It’s set in a post-apocalyptic future where society is divided into into personality types, called factions.”  She moved to sit down and Tanya kept talking as if she hadn’t noticed.  “You’re born into one—like erudite, dauntless, or candor—and at sixteen there’s an aptitude test and you choose where you want to be.”

“And one girl somehow _diverges_ from the norm and what?  Leads a rebellion?”

“Well, kind of, but not exactly.  I can’t explain without giving more away, but it’s good.  You should try it.”

“What is with this planet’s obsession with teenagers living dystopian futures?”

Tanya made a sound approximating an ‘I don’t know’ and shrugged.  “I guess it’s because they have characters that go through the same things you do but they’re doing it in world so different than your own that it’s like—I don’t know—like you can connect with it, but it’s so different from your life that it takes you away from your own problems.”

“So oppressive dystopian futures are escapism for you?” She paused to take a sip of coffee.  “Because if you ever lived in one, you wouldn’t think that.”

The second half of her statement was, again, directed more to her coffee cup than Tanya, so she let it drop.  “Well, not escapism, but they have this message that everyone is dealing with the same stuff even when the world is crumbling around them.” 

She paused and Miss Quill appeared to be considering what she was saying. 

Or she was just bored.

“Plus,” Tanya continued, “It’s interesting to read about people who do more than just go to school and do homework.”

“You lot hardly need fiction for that.”

“Guess not. With the shadows, space dragons, and alien plant dead people thing…” she trailed off with a chuckle as she tried to describe the Lankin.

Her smile faded when she started to really think about the Lankin.  It was just an alien like the others.  More importantly, it was gone.  Her friends had already moved past it, but it still bothered her.  It had taken more than just her dad’s face—it had his voice, his memories.  Her friends didn’t get it.  No one did.  Well, Miss Quill might, she realized.

 “The Lankin was here too, wasn’t it?”  Tanya asked and she got another raised eyebrow in response.  “Matteusz said it was.  That it was your sister?”

Miss Quill’s eyes narrowed. “What else has Matteusz said about me?”

“Mostly that you drink a lot of coffee and barely talk to him.”

She considered that and then nodded.  “That’s accurate.”

“But the Lankin, it came here as your sister?”

“It wasn’t my sister.”

“But it took her form right?  Like my dad.”

“Except I knew from the start it was an alien.”

“So did I,” Tanya said quickly.  “At first I thought I was hallucinating or something, but I knew it wasn’t really him.  It didn’t take me long to figure out it came through the bunghole.”

“You’re really calling it that?”

“Yeah, why not?”  Miss Quill shrugged and said nothing, so Tanya continued.  “It was weird, though, wasn’t it?”

“Wasn’t what?”

“The Lankin.”

Tanya tried—and failed—to keep the exasperation from her voice.  Miss Quill had to know what she was talking about but was intentionally being obtuse.  Maybe Miss Quill didn’t want to talk about it, but until that moment Tanya hadn’t realized how much _she_ needed to talk about it. 

“Why are we even talking about this?” 

“Because we experienced the same thing.”

“No we didn’t,” Miss Quill said quickly.  A little too quickly for someone who claimed not to want to talk about it.  “Besides, it’s gone. Sent back through the _bunghole_.”

“It still happened.”

“It came to Ram as his girlfriend or whatever, go talk to him.”

“Ram didn’t talk to her.”

“It,” Miss Quill corrected with a frown of annoyance. “It was the Lankin.”

“None of the others talked to it, but you did.  We did.”

“So?”

“So it was—I don’t know—just weird,” Tanya said with a sigh.  “Weirder than the other stuff.”

She looked at Miss Quill, whose frown had faded into a look of not exactly concern, but something like it.  She still didn’t say anything, but gestured with her fingers for her to go on.

“I mean, I was sitting in my bedroom, talking to this thing that I knew wasn’t my dad—couldn’t be my dad—but it looked like him and sounded like him.”

“It was trying to deceive you,” Miss Quill said with a matter-of-fact shrug. There was no antagonism or argument in her voice this time. 

“Well, yeah, but it knew so much and rationally, like in my head, I knew it had to be telepathic or something, but it felt like him.  And I knew that it wasn’t him, and yet, there were these moments where I’d forget all that and it felt like I was talking to him, you know?”

Miss Quill still said nothing, but stared at her with such intensity that Tanya knew she understood. 

“The thing is,” she continued. “Even knowing what it was and what it was doing, there’s this small part of me that wanted to believe it was really him.  Or even that he… I mean it would come back, so I could just feel like I was talking to my dad again for a few minutes.”

Those last words came out in a rush, and after she said them aloud, a wave of embarrassment washed over her.  She broke eye contact and looked down at her hands.  As apprehensive as she felt about how Miss Quill would react, it had felt good just to say it to someone.

“And now you probably think I’m crazy,” Tanya said more to herself than Miss Quill.  “Because who wishes an alien intent on harming your friends and family returns?”

“Someone who is grieving.”  She looked up again at the sound of her voice.  Once their eyes met, Miss Quill continued, “Grief can make the irrational seem rational.”

Tanya nodded.  “Were you and your sister close?” she asked after a minute

“No,” Miss Quill said with a scoff.  Her face softened the tiniest bit as she continued, “Well, not in your human sense, but she was my sister.  And Quill sisters are…”

Tanya looked at her in confusion as she trailed off, but then it hit her: she had been using the present tense.  There were no more Quill sisters of any kind.  There was only Miss Quill. 

“I can’t imagine what it’s like to have lost everyone.”

“No,” she said with a forced swallow.  “I’m sure you can’t.”

Miss Quill stood up abruptly to refill her coffee, even though Tanya could see that the cup wasn’t even half empty.  She wanted to say something more, but knew that wasn’t what Miss Quill needed.  It wasn’t the same—Tanya had always had her mum and brothers—but there were still times where she felt like she had lost her whole word when her dad died.  And there was no easy fix for that feeling.  Sometimes the only thing that helped was for someone to acknowledge it and then change the subject.

“How did you know that hitting it with the bus would work?” Tanya asked, after giving Miss Quill a minute to collect herself.

“It operated like veins of a heart—all leading to one branch,” she explained, carrying her coffee back to the table.  “The smaller strands could reform themselves, but take out the main branch and it’s incapacitated.” 

“Could you have done it with a car?”

“Maybe.”  Miss Quill shrugged.  “But the bus was more fun.”

Tanya laughed and Miss Quill even smiled a little bit before taking another sip of her coffee.

“I’m just glad you figured it out, because what I tried didn’t work,” Tanya said.  “For a minute, it seemed to weaken it, but it wasn’t enough”

“What did you try?”

Tanya looked at her in surprise.  She had assumed that Matteusz or Charlie would have told her.  “I took its hand,” she explained.  “But instead of giving it my grief, I gave it my anger.”

“That’s clever.”

“It was a guess,” Tanya said dismissively.  Her actions weren’t deserving of compliments.  It had been a gamble—a risk that failed.  “A wrong guess.”

“Still a clever idea.  You didn’t just stand their hacking at vines that instantly reformed themselves like the rest of them,” she said derisively.  “You tried something.  It shows that you’re capable of a lot more than just getting good marks on physics homework.”

Miss Quill’s words surprised Tanya.  She hadn’t thought the woman paid them any more attention than she had too, but clearly she had been.  And, for some reason, she saw potential in her beyond academics.  That was the most unexpected thing—most people just talked about her marks and potential for getting into a top university.

“Thanks.”

“Whatever,”

Miss Quill rolled her eyes in a way that made clear compliment time was over. A part of Tanya was grateful.  Too much praise from a teacher—any teacher—wasn’t something she enjoyed.  She wasn’t April.  But she did have one more question.

“So is our physics like totally basic and fundamental to you?”

Miss Quill nodded.  “And some is flat out wrong.”

“Which parts?”

“No, you live on Earth,” she said with a shake of her head.  “You will take Earth A-levels, so Earth physics you will learn.”

“You don’t actually teach us physics.”

Miss Quill opened her mouth to respond, but they heard the door open and Charlie’s voice. 

“We’re home,” he called from the corridor.  “Sorry we’re late,” Charlie said as they walked into the kitchen.  He stopped short when he saw them at the table together.  He looked at Miss Quill.  “What have you been doing?”

“Talking about physics,” she snapped as she stood up.  “That was twenty minutes—not fifteen.”

“Bus took forever,” Matteusz explained as he dropped his backpack on a chair and sat down next to Tanya.  “Sorry,” he apologized directly to her while Charlie and Miss Quill continued to bicker.

“It’s fine.”

“Did you really talk with her?”

“Yeah, it was odd, but not bad.”

“Good.”

Something about the way Matteusz said that made Tanya suspicious, but they were drawn back into Miss Quill and Charlie’s fight—well, maybe not fight since neither had raised their voice, but it was a clear disagreement.

“I am not about to fetch takeaway for you and your friends.”

“But we have homework.”

“You should have picked something up on your way home.”

“We didn’t think of it.”

Miss Quill rolled her eyes. “You never think.”

“Delivery then.”  Charlie looked at them.  “Pizza?” he asked and they both nodded.  “You’ll order us pizza.”

Miss Quill frowned, but went to pick up first her phone from the counter and then her coffee cup from the table.  She didn’t make eye contact with either of them or say anything as she left the room, but they heard her talking to a pizza place as she headed up the stairs.  Tanya exchanged a look with Matteusz and then looked at Charlie.

He gave them one of his Charlie-grins.  “So, poetry, then?”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm always so nervous when I write from a new character's perspective, so let me know what you all thought of my Tanya and how she and Quill interact.


End file.
